I went with some family members to the Accademia in Florence today, where we took in the extraordinary marble statue “The Rape of the Sabine Women” by Giambologna, which depicts a famous—but probably apocryphal—episode where Romans kidnapped women from the neighboring Sabine tribe in order to force them into marriage (the story was the basis for the highly entertaining but more than a little problematic musical “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”).

As AuntSharper and I circled the statue, she dryly remarked, “He may have been able to steal the woman, but his penis fell off.” I circled around again, and sure enough, the statue of the abductor was dickless. At some point, his marble cazzo had clearly broken off, leaving nothing but a busted-up looking chunk of marble between his legs. We both snickered so loud the other tourists stared.

The reason classic statues are so poorly endowed is because it was considered unseemly in the Renaissance to put emphasis on the genitalia. Seriously. Those dudely artists thought a honkin’ dick detracted from the beauty of the work.

Actual surviving Greek and Roman marbles and bronzes are much more…accurate. *snicker*

You really haven’t lived until you’ve had to add a t-shirt and board shorts to “The Birth of Venus” because apparently adding a bikini wasn’t modest enough!

Not sure if this happened in Italy too, but in Britain in the 19th century the Victorians deliberately snapped all the penises off Roman and Greek statues because they didn’t think people should be looking at naked genitals. Which means that the British Museum in London now has boxes and boxes of marble dicks sitting around in cupboards.